CHAPTER 1 What Is “The True Self”? In this high place it is as simple as this, Leave everything you know behind. Step toward the cold surface, say the old prayer of rough love and open both arms. Those who come with empty hands will stare into the lake astonished, there, in the cold light reflecting pure snow, the true shape of your own face. DAVID WHYTE, ‘‘TILICHO LAKE’’ onservatives look for absolute truth; liber- Cals look for something ‘‘real’’ and authentic. Spouses look for a marriage that will last ‘‘ ’til death do us part.’’ Believers look for a God who never fails them; scientists look for a universal theory. They are all on theCOPYRIGHTED same quest. We are all looking MATERIAL for an immortal dia- mond: something utterly reliable, something loyal and true, something we can always depend on, something 1 2 IMMORTAL DIAMOND unforgettable and shining. There is an invitation and an offer for all of these groups from John’s very short Second Letter, when he writes: ‘‘There is a truth that lives within us that will be with us forever’’ (2 John 2). But most of us know little about this, so we end up as St. Augustine admits in his Confessions: ‘‘Late have I loved you, Beauty so very ancient and so ever new. Late have I loved you! You were within,butIwas without.’’1 We give up eventually—or do not even try—to seek this truth and instead retreat into ourselves, as if to say, ‘‘I alone will be my reference point.’’ It is the most common problem of individualism and egocentricity. I think they go together. We split and retreat into ourselves, but we invariably go to our ego (small self, the False Self) because that is all we know about. It is the common default position, even if it is largely unconscious. Yet it often takes over, and, depending on the severity of our ‘‘splitness,’’ it makes all common forms of life, including marriage, lasting friendships, and most commitments, largely impossible. But this retreat into the personal ego self is both absolutely right and terribly wrong at the same time. In this book I hope to demonstrate what makes both of these assertions true. What Is ‘‘The True Self’’? 3 We are right about going inside; otherwise we become lost in an outer and revolving hall of mirrors, as Augustine confesses above. But the question is, ‘‘Which inside?’’ I am using the language of the True Self and the False Self, which many have found quite helpful in talking about these very points. It is good and necessary to pull back into your True Self, but it is quite a disaster if you pull back into what is your False Self for too long (or, worse, never leave it). Both True Self and False Self will feel like your ‘‘self,’’ so you see the confusion. One might be called true ‘‘centering,’’ and the other is the more common ‘‘ego centering,’’ which shows itself to be the core of the problem. So Jesus, and most other great spiritual teachers, make it very clear that there is a self that has to be found and one that has to be let go of or even ‘‘renounced’’ (Mark 8:35; Matthew 10:39, 16:25; Luke 9:24; John 12:26). Buddhism allows no compromise or softening of this essential message, which is why many are attracted to its utter honesty. That there are two selves is rather constant in the Perennial Tradition, although the language might be very different from group to group. The important issue is how we tell the difference. Those who deny a sacred source to the universe (‘‘God’’) have no 4 IMMORTAL DIAMOND way of naming something ‘‘true’’ and must resort to psychology, philosophy, and cultural norms alone to find something authoritative. And they are very good—as far as they go. Those of us who claim to believe in God more often than not deny that ‘‘we are already his children’’ (1 John 3:1) and create arbitrary hoops to jump through—at which few fully succeed if they are honest. So my moral self, which is always in flux, becomes the measure, and we have again lost any Absolute Measure. It seems the False Self would rather have very few ‘‘wins’’ than let God win with everybody. This is my sad conclusion after a lifetime of working in many churches on many continents, and it is summed up in an often murdered text by most preachers and translators: ‘‘I am calling all of you, but so few of you allow yourselves to be chosen’’ (Matthew 22:14).2 We are going to talk about the two selves in many ways. Like Socrates’s peripatetic method, we will just keep ‘‘walking around’’ it in this book. The search for soul has gained a bit of clarity in our time by finding words that make sense to the modern, more psychological mind. We might now call the False Self our small self or ego, and we might call the True Self our soul. When the True Self becomes clearer to you, and it will for most of you, you will have grounded your What Is ‘‘The True Self’’? 5 spirituality in its first and fundamental task, and you will have hired the best counseling service possible. I love to tell people, ‘‘You have just saved yourself ten thousand dollars in unnecessary therapy!’’ Why? Because in finding your True Self, you will have found an absolute reference point that is both utterly within you and utterly beyond you at the very same time.This grounds the soul in big and reliable truth. ‘‘My deepest me is God!’’ St. Catherine of Genoa shouted as she ran through the streets of town, just as Colossians had already shouted to both Jews and pagans, ‘‘The mystery is Christ within you—your hope of Glory!’’ (1:27). The healthy inner authority of the True Self can now be balanced by a more objective outer authority of Scripture and mature Tradition. Your experience is not just your experience, in other words. That’s what tells you that you are not crazy. That God is both utterly beyond me and yet totally within me at the same time is the exquisite balance that most religion seldom achieves, in my opinion. Now the law is written on both tablets of stone (Exodus 31:18) and within your heart (Deuteronomy 29:12–14), and the old covenant has rightly morphed into the new (Jeremiah 31:31–34), just as it was already understood and lived by holy Jews. Jesus fully represents this 6 IMMORTAL DIAMOND ideal Jewish balance. Remember, Jesus was not a ‘‘Christian’’! People who find this wholeness are balanced in general and tend to flourish, as opposed to either mere conformists or mere rebels who just take sides on everything—with no wisdom required. Think of poor Galileo Galilei who, under pressure from the church to deny that the earth moves around the sun, says quietly before he dies, ‘‘And yet it moves!’’ He wisely knew how to survive in a totalitarian system, and yet now he survives and thrives as the Father of Modern Science and the modern popes have exonerated him. You are both the Body of Christ and only a part of the Body of Christ at the same time. You are both the center of the world and on the edge of that same world, or as St. Bonaventure put it, ‘‘the center is now everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.’’ Your personal experience of chosenness is pre- cisely what allows you to pass on that same experience to others, say both Isaiah and Paul (Isaiah 2:1–5, 56:1–7; Romans 11:16ff.). Outer spiritual believing tends to say, ‘‘Only here’’ or ‘‘only there,’’ while authentic inner knowing tends to say, ‘‘Always and everywhere.’’ We start elitist and we end egalitarian. And Ken Wilber rightly adds ‘‘Always!’’ What we What Is ‘‘The True Self’’? 7 receive freely, we give away freely (Matthew 10:8). Outer authority told us we were indeed special (that’s the only way to get started), but maturing inner authority allows us to see that everyone is special and unique, although it usually takes the maturity of the second half of life to see this. Young zealots still think it’s all about them.3 I promise you that the discovery of your True Self will feel like a thousand pounds of weight have fallen from your back. You will no longer have to build, protect, or promote any idealized self image. Living in the True Self is quite simply a much happier existence, even though we never live there a full twenty-four hours a day. But you henceforth have it as a place to always go back to. You have finally discovered the alternative to your False Self. You are like Jacob awakening from sleep and joining the chorus of mystics in every age. ‘‘You were here all along, and I never knew it!’’ he says (Genesis 28:16). He anoints the stone pillow where this happened and names it Bethel, or ‘‘the house of God and gate of heaven’’ (28:17–18).4 Jacob then carries the presence with him wherever he goes. What was first only there is soon everywhere. The gate of heaven is first of all in one concrete place, better if carried with you, and 8 IMMORTAL DIAMOND best when found everywhere. That is the progression of the spiritual life.